Knowing Eventuality
by simply-aly
Summary: Newly turned Elena gets into some vampire related trouble and Klaus steps in to help her.


He finds her curled up in an alley, crying. There is a body of a young man lying next to her and when she looks up after hearing his deliberately loud footsteps, Klaus can see the blood still fresh on her face. She glances between him and her victim before whimpering then closes her eyes and shakes her head. She looks so lost, so scared. She reminds him of another girl with her face, only then, he was the vampire and she was just an innocent.

"Accidental kills happen," Klaus tells Elena, deliberately keeping his voice devoid of emotion. "Especially at first. Control isn't…easy."

Klaus remembers his own attempts at control when he was turned. He remembers the look in Tatia's eyes, so very much like the look in Elena's now, when she saw what he was forced to become.

"I never wanted this," she tells him rather unexpectedly. "I—it was stupid of me to expect to just go on with my life after Stefan and Damon, but I thought I _could._ I thought I could just live out my life as a human and…I don't know. It was stupid."

He doesn't say it, but he agrees. For many reasons, he wanted Elena to stay human—her blood and the part of him that _knows_ Tatia wouldn't have wanted another girl with her face to become a vampire chiefly among them—but he knew her attachment, for lack of a better word, to the Salvatore brothers would inevitably bring this result. It was foolish of her to believe otherwise.

He suspects that some part of her must have known, though, because if she truly didn't want to be a vampire, she should have run. After finding out what they were, she should have disassociated with the brothers from the offset. That she didn't, Klaus thinks, shows that she accepted this as a possibility, even if she didn't prefer it.

He reaches into his pocket, pulls out a handkerchief, and hands it to her. "Clean yourself," he directs her, his tone even but forceful. "I'll take care of the body quickly and then I'll see you home."

Elena nods, and there's this look in her eyes that Klaus fears when he places it. Nobody has looked at him with such trust since Tatia; and with Elena wearing her face, Klaus fears what this could mean.

He picks up the body devoid of blood and quickly rushes into the woods where he uses his vampire speed to dig a shallow grave and buries the body. Not long ago, that would have been the end of it, but with the Council on their backs, it is only a temporary measure. Tomorrow, he'll get Damon or Stefan to help him take the body far out of town and burn it.

He goes back to Elena and finds her clutching the now bloody handkerchief, her face clearly still slightly red, but not so obviously now. She holds the kerchief out to him and he takes it, knowing the reminder is frightening her. Klaus keeps hold of her hand after the exchange, and starts guiding her back to the Gilbert house.

"You will learn to keep control with time," he tells her. "It is a constant battle within you; the predator you are battling for supremacy with the humanity we all cling so desperately to. In the beginning, the predator can easily overpower your humanity…but with practice and time, your humanity can become strong enough to hold the beast back. It can't tame it—we vampires are a predatory species, and that has to be accepted, not denied—but it can be held at bay. It is something that comes more easily with time."

As he speaks, Klaus watches her continue to wipe at her mouth as if it is still covered with her victim's blood. He understands the motion and the psychological reason for it. "So the…the switch that they talk about—it's just that the vampire part has—" she struggles to find the word "—overpowered the human part?"

He shrugs. "Something like that. It's not something that's been _studied_, per say, but that is more or less the theory."

He stops moving then, and she turns to him in surprise. Klaus just looks forward, staring at the Gilbert house, and Elena turns to stare along with him.

Finally, she takes a deep breath and steps forward. "Goodnight," she whispers gently.

Klaus is quiet until she turns the doorknob. "There are whispers of a cure," he says then, "I could look into it if you wish."

Elena freezes. Neither moves for the longest time. Klaus watches Elena stare at the door in thought, weighing her options. After a long pause, she turns to look at him. She shakes her head as she says, "This was always how it was going to go."


End file.
